


how to keep your stupid brother from getting killed by vampires

by elliptical



Series: the most self-indulgent vampire AU of all time [4]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (Ex) Vampire Hunter Ronan Lynch, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Declan Lynch is bad at feelings, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Lynch Brothers, Gen, M/M, Ronan Lynch is Bad at Feelings, Vampire Adam Parrish, Vampire Blue Sargent, Vampire Hunter Declan Lynch, Vampire Hunters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-10-29 18:40:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20801132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical
Summary: The threat worked almost too well.  Ronan moved around the counter with lightning speed, fisted his hands in Declan’s shirt, and slammed him so hard against the wall that Declan’s ribcage creaked in protest.“If you touch him,” Ronan breathed, his eyes a burning glacier, his face inches from Declan’s own, “I willfucking kill you.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> truly i don't know if anyone's wanted to see lynch vampire hunter family dynamics  
but i do and this continues to be the most self-indulgent AU i've ever written  
so here we go

It stood to reason that the one time Declan Lynch didn’t expect to be attacked by vampires would be the one time they pulled one over on him.

The Barns should have been safe. The Lynch family property was tucked into the Virginia foothills, an impossible dreamscape of ramshackle buildings and a sprawling farmhouse with too many additions for the original shape to be discernible. It was a slice of heaven, peace on earth. Declan’s feelings on the place were, for the most part, choking bitterness and acid. The picturesque landscape had never been home. So he’d been more than happy to leave the property in the care of his shithead middle brother while his angel youngest brother was away at school.

(When Niall Lynch had died, when Declan became the executor of the estate, when he finally had the power to protect his brothers completely from what their father had been, Ronan and Declan had agreed wholeheartedly on just one change. That Matthew could not be ruined by this life. That he needed to be set somewhere out of harm’s way where vampire hunters and vampires and everything inbetween could not tear into him.)

Despite Declan’s bitter feelings about the place, he was confident -- stupidly confident, as if he didn’t know to question everything about this life, as if he didn’t know the world was made of lies and half-truths -- that the Barns would be safe. The grounds were hidden and well-protected against vampire threats. There shouldn’t have been any bloodsuckers nearby.

The Barns would be a good place to recover from injury.

And Declan was injured. No bones were broken, no muscles torn, no joints dislocated. But his chest and ribs and stomach were such a ruin of broken skin that hunting would have been impossible. He wasn’t in prime fighting form to begin with. And he didn’t like the idea that his scabbed-over wounds were a homing beacon for any supernatural creature with advanced olfactory senses.

He needed somewhere safe to lie low. The Barns should have been the obvious choice.

When he crept onto the porch, it wasn’t because he was trying to avoid vampire detection. He’d parked his Volvo off the property line and made his way to the farmhouse through the woods rather than walking down the driveway because he didn’t want to meet Ronan. 

As far as Declan was aware, his brother alternated between sleeping at Monmouth Manufacturing and sleeping at home, depending on his mood. If Ronan was at the Barns, Declan didn’t want to explain his injury or his whereabouts or anything else. The house was large enough that Declan felt pretty confident he could tuck himself in his childhood bedroom and avoid Ronan entirely.

If he’d been on full alert, the vampire wouldn’t have surprised him.

As it was, the bloodsucker knocked him off his feet. His back smacked the floor of the porch. His reflexes were good enough that he’d drawn the gun at his hip almost before he’d hit the ground. But he wasn’t fast enough to keep the bloodsucker from pinning his wrists above his head before he could get off a shot, or to keep a knee from pressing into his wounded stomach.

Declan had seen vampires at their best pretending and their worst ferality. He’d seen them charm rooms of well-dressed people with preternatural ease. He’d seen them blood-starved and black-eyed and snapping, sharpened teeth tearing up their mouths. He’d seen them dead and papery, aflame and screaming, pretending at life with fake light in their faces.

This vampire was something else.

It was an issue with his eyes, Declan thought, and fought the insane urge to laugh. Death or worse was seconds away, and he was pondering the blue of some bloodsucker’s gaze. They were too flat, maybe, or the color was off, or -- the pupils weren’t dilated.

That was it. The vampire’s fingers tightened on his wrist, a thumb pressing between the bones until Declan’s fingers involuntarily loosened. The gun slid from his grasp. Rather than release either of Declan’s arms, the bloodsucker moved Declan’s dominant hand a whole six inches from the weapon, then returned to pinning him.

Declan felt the air leave his lungs in a pained exhale as the vampire shoved a knee more firmly into his abdomen. The wound there screamed.

The eyes were so wrong. No shift in the black or blue, no crinkles around the corners, no flicking from Declan’s face to throat. They were too human, but the expressionless side of humanity, a starkness reserved for the back dealings of corporate America. Declan couldn’t see even a hint of fang. The vampire was not hunting, nor did he betray the amusement of a cat with a mouse. He was simply empty.

There was no doubting the nature of the creature. Some of the more skilled impostors could skim so close to humanity that hunters didn’t realize until the teeth were already in them. But Declan could have recognized ‘vampire’ in this body from a mile away. It was the gauntness of the cheeks, the slightly off spacing of the eyes, the alien sculpture of the skull beneath the skin. Shadows stretched across hollows that shouldn’t exist. This was a thing that crept in the night, that caused goosebump reactions to unexplained noise, that instilled within humans a primal fear of themselves turned inside-out.

The vampire had him pinned against the porch, and there was nothing in his body language except the vague boredom of a CEO about to fire some underling they’d never met.

He was, Declan thought with a new thrill of terror, doing an excellent impression of the way vampire hunters handled their prey.

If there was a vampire at the Barns, which should have been the safest sanctuary in Virginia, Ronan was dead. There was no question about that. Matthew might be safe on his campus, but Ronan had been discovered and destroyed. Declan looked at the cold, removed vampire, and he thought about his idiot younger brother staring into these same blue eyes, and his idiot younger brother dying in terror and in pain, and the fight went out of his body.

It didn’t matter, did it, if he died here. Not if he’d already failed his family so completely.

He closed his eyes. He didn’t think much of the sound of the creaky back door opening. Maybe an entire roost of bloodsuckers had made a nest out of the Lynch property, a final laughing fuck you to Niall Lynch’s memory. The adrenaline-electrified part of Declan’s brain that tried to catalogue information from his surroundings wasn’t interested enough to give him helpful insight.

Ronan’s voice said, “Hey. Parrish. Chill.”

Declan’s eyes snapped open. He tipped his head back to get an upside-down look at his shithead brother, distinctly outlined in the yellow glow of the porch light.

Ronan was definitely alive. Alive by all definitions of the word. His skin had a healthy flush, and he lacked the hungry posture or eerie otherness of the undead. He'd folded his arms over his chest, insolent and unconcerned, his lip curled in a sneer. A classic Lynch pose. Declan and Niall had mirrored it often enough. The only one in the family who might struggle to telegraph so much uncaring asshole was Matthew.

Ronan was also not armored at all. His tank top left his arms and the top of his chest bare, the edges of his tattoo curling over his shoulders. There were a few patches of gauze pressed to his skin, one on each shoulder and one at the top of his left arm. His jeans were ripped to hell, stained with dirt, and lacked a belt. Declan could see right through the denim to the skin underneath, because Ronan didn’t have any protective padding whatsoever.

The vampire did not let go of Declan’s wrists or stop rearranging his intestines with his kneecap, but he did glance up. The homebaked Henrietta drawl that left his lips threw Declan for another loop. If he’d had to guess what the vampire might sound like, it would have been closer to the inside of a grave than a summery porch swing.

“You invite this asshole?” There wasn’t any hiss in the voice since the second set of teeth wasn’t out. Just a pleasant Southern twang and renewed, bruising pressure on Declan’s wrists.

“This is my piece-of-shit brother.” Ronan sauntered over to them, a performance of unconcern, leaning down to pick up the gun. “Doesn’t need an invitation. Declan, this is Adam. You’re not allowed to kill him.”

Declan’s mind spun its tires in the dirt like a truck hopelessly trapped in a mud slick. Whatever Ronan had gotten himself into, Declan was going to have to get him out of it.

Ronan might have read the intention on his face, or just didn’t trust Declan as far as he could throw him. “There’ll be another gun on his belt, at least one strapped to his leg, and at least one under his shirt. Two inside his jacket. Holy water and crosses, too, but those won’t fuck you up. Probably a dozen knives, fuck me if I’ll be able to figure out where all of them are stashed.”

Declan bore the humiliation of being divested of varying weapons belts with snarling grace. At least he still had the gun and two knives stashed in his boots.

The vampire -- Parrish, Adam -- finished handing Ronan the majority of Declan’s arsenal and sat back on Declan’s thighs. Declan’s wrists had been free for a good few minutes, given that Adam had to release them to search his body, but he’d stayed where he was. When pinned by a bloodsucker, if you didn’t have a foolproof plan of escape, sometimes the best course of action was to look helpless and wait.

“Your piece-of-shit brother’s hurt,” Adam said. Declan grit his teeth.

Something about Ronan sharpened. It wasn’t that his posture straightened or that his facial expression changed, really. It was just the slightest tilt of his chin, a change in the coiling of his energy, a switch from ‘bored and amused’ to ‘fully awake.’

“How bad?”

Ronan was not addressing Declan, which made his blood boil. “I’m _right here,”_ he snapped.

Adam also ignored him. “Bad enough for me to smell fresh blood under his armor. Not bad enough for me to think he’s dying.”

“Fucking hell.” Ronan’s anger was an incendiary blaze, familiar and almost comforting. “Get inside.”

The vampire finally let him up, though he didn’t offer a hand, and Declan wouldn’t have taken it if he had. Declan rolled onto his knees and pushed himself to his feet with a grunt, then headed into the childhood home that had never truly been home.

“Let me see,” Ronan snapped as soon as they were in the kitchen. He grabbed a first aid kit from above the sink, slamming it down against the countertop to make a show of how pissed he was. Everything about Ronan was always noisy. He was exhaustion shaped like a human being.

Declan rolled his eyes. “I patched myself up just fine, thank you very much. I need some sleep, and then I’ll be gone.”

Ronan glowered at him.

“From where I’m sitting,” Adam offered from where he was, indeed, sitting on the kitchen table, “you’re gonna get to sleep faster if you let him check that you aren’t dying.”

“You can fuck right off,” Declan told him. “I don’t know what the _hell_ you think you’re doing in my brother’s life, but--”

“I’m his donor.” Ronan had not ceased to glower, and his voice was corrosive, daring Declan to react. “Now let me see.”

Declan took a very, very deep breath. He counted to ten. At the end of the ten seconds, the urge to hit Ronan in the face had not abated.

Of all the stupid ways for his brother to enact a rebellious streak.

“Everything’s cleaned and stitched already,” Declan said. “I wasn’t expecting anyone to be home.”

‘Anyone’ he directed acidly at the vampire, whose cool and removed demeanor hadn’t slipped an inch.

Ronan smiled. It was a vicious thing, a knife slash. The anger bled through it like a vindictive weapon. “You missed the show. Should’ve gotten here two hours ago, when Parrish still had his teeth in me.”

“Hey.” That was Adam, vampire, bloodsucker, parasite. His tone was mild, but Declan heard an edge of pointed steel underneath. “I’m not gonna be an excuse to piss off your brother. So you can knock that shit right off.”

Declan experienced a feeling of grudging respect, which annoyed him.

Ronan’s response was to grit his teeth and break eye contact and turn away, which annoyed Declan more. God knew he’d been trying his entire life to get his brother to understand shame, or at the very least _remorse._ That some bloodsucking kid Declan had never met could be more successful at it than him rankled.

“You two are going to need to explain how this happened,” Declan said. “Because all I see is a parasite charming his way into my home and manipulating my brother into giving up his self, and I _know_ what I’d do to fix that.”

He said it as a test. Ronan would never illustrate the history here in actual words, and Declan didn’t trust a single thing that came out of the vampire’s mouth. But Ronan couldn’t hide his feelings if he tried. Every emotion he experienced was an extreme, a storm, an impending catastrophe. Threatening the vampire was the fastest way to find out how attached his brother really was.

It worked almost too well. Ronan moved around the counter with lightning speed, fisted his hands in Declan’s shirt, and slammed him so hard against the wall that Declan’s ribcage creaked in protest.

“If you touch him,” Ronan breathed, his eyes a burning glacier, his face inches from Declan’s own, “I will _fucking kill you.”_

Declan smiled. That was just to piss Ronan off, to get back at him for the way Declan’s heart was frozen in his chest. It was a politician’s smile, all performance and no warmth. “So it’s like that, then.”

“Yeah.” Ronan released his grip and stepped back. “It’s like that.”

“If Dad could see you now.”

Ronan’s answering laugh was sharp, a hyena’s cry. “You think I give a one iota of a single, solitary _fuck_ what Dad would think?”

Some things had definitely changed since Declan had last seen him.

It wasn’t the right time for it, and there’d never be a right time to express it, but the sudden warmth in Declan’s chest felt a lot like pride.

“All right,” Adam said, swinging his legs off the table and standing up. “I’m heading out.”

Ronan didn’t break eye contact with Declan. “You don’t have to go just because this dickwad’s decided to breathe our air.”

“Yeah, I do.” Adam’s voice was still mild, reasonable. “If you two are gonna fight about my right to exist, I don’t want to hear what either party says. I’ll see you later.”

Ronan paused. “Yeah, okay,” he said after a moment. “That’s a good call.”

Declan glanced over at Adam to see how the vampire reacted, but his face was a mask. If anything, he’d doubled down on the chilling remoteness. He let himself out the front door and closed it carefully enough to keep it from slamming, then headed down the steps. A car engine started. Declan exhaled a tiny breath of relief.

As soon as Declan was confident that the vampire was far enough away not to hear their conversation, though, he started in on the fury. “Now’s the time to tell me that you’re a hostage in this situation.”

“I don’t lie.”

“You stupid _child.”_ Ronan was only two years younger than Declan, and certainly not a child anymore, but Declan felt ten thousand years old. He’d felt like that for as long as he could remember. “How much does he know about you?”

“Everything.”

Just one more nail in the coffin. Declan strode to an open kitchen window and gripped a fistful of the thick blackout curtain edging the side. A new addition to the decor. “Does he know you’re a Lynch?”

“Yeah.”

“Does he know what that means?”

“Yup.”

“Do you have _any_ idea…” Declan stopped himself, took a jagged breath. There were a million things Ronan didn’t know. A million tiny sacrifices Declan was still making, even now, especially now. He yanked on the curtain. One tug wasn’t enough, but when he leaned his strength into it, the fabric split down the seams.

Ronan deigned not to comment on the destruction. “I’m not interested in the lecture. Let’s pretend you gave it and I ignored it, since that’s how it’s gonna go.” He was behind Declan, keeping a careful distance. “Stay the fuck out of Henrietta.”

Declan turned back with the torn black fabric clutched in his hand like a murder weapon found at a crime scene. “You want to see how I’m hurt?” he growled. His clothes were layered, jacket over shirt over armored padding to keep teeth out of his arms and torso. He hadn’t expected to be attacked tonight. But even making his way to the Barns, it didn’t occur to him not to gear up. His life had required insane levels of protection for long enough.

He dropped the curtain and shrugged the jacket off, yanked his shirt over his head, unstrapped the armor underneath. Most of the bandages were still in place, but some had slipped when the vampire tackled him earlier. Enough for Ronan to tell that the pattern of lacerations over Declan’s chest and ribs and stomach was made up of dozens of teeth marks.

Declan should have seen it coming, but he didn’t; the night was one surreal, off-kilter conflict after another. He didn’t have his footing solidly enough underneath him to predict what would light his brother’s fuses.

Ronan’s fist smashed into his face.

Declan staggered, already tasting blood in his mouth. His nose was broken for sure. Wasn’t the first time, wouldn’t be the last. He retaliated. All physical, no mental calculation. His eyes weren’t focused well enough to angle a punch, so he swept out with his leg, dragged Ronan’s feet from under him.

Ronan went down with zero grace and a hundred percent rage. His fingers snatched at Declan’s jeans, yanking Declan’s left leg out to spill him onto the floor as well. From there, the two were a feral brawl across the kitchen tile. Declan’s knuckles connected with Ronan’s jaw. Ronan’s fingers hooked inside Declan’s mouth. Someone’s lip split, someone else’s eye blackened. Declan was injured, but Ronan was out of practice, and that made the brothers more evenly matched than they might have been otherwise.

Whenever the two oldest Lynch brothers fought, it looked like they were trying to kill each other. They had not, historically, _actually_ been trying to kill each other. But this time, when Declan’s stitches popped and his wounds began to bleed fresh, Ronan didn’t back off. He’d wrestled Declan onto his back, and his eyes were bright with a wildness that Declan hadn’t ever seen here. In plenty of bloodsuckers, sure. Not in Ronan. His memory of the bloodsuckers’ actions was why he wasn’t surprised, not really, when Ronan pressed his forearm against Declan’s throat and leaned his weight into it. Dug the fingertips of his other hand into the lacerations, so Declan’s mouth opened in a silent howl, sound impossible with Ronan’s arm crushing his windpipe. Bright fireworks popped in his peripheral vision.

_“Who did you kill?”_ Ronan demanded, and Declan caught the terror under the fury, understood something new. “Who the _fuck did you kill?”_

Declan tried to gasp a breath around the pressure. He didn’t plead with his eyes -- Lynches didn’t plead, period -- but he leveled a narrow gaze on Ronan’s wild expression. _I can’t answer if I can’t talk, and I sure as hell can’t answer if I’m dead._

Ronan let up just enough for Declan to suck in a gulp of air. His voice came out a croak, a rasp. “Who are you afraid I killed?”

“Answer the _fucking_ question.”

“People who wanted us dead.”

“That’s everyone.”

“You see why I’m so fucking busy.”

Ronan steadied his breathing, lifted his arm from Declan’s throat, removed his crimson-stained fingers from the wounds. Declan could feel new pulses of blood oozing across his skin, dripping over each bump of his ribs.

“Were they in Henrietta?” Ronan asked.

“No. Is Parrish’s nest local?” Declan already knew it was; he’d been able to tell the second Adam’s warm accent left his mouth. He just wanted to see whether Ronan was invested enough to be a fucking liar.

“Parrish is a loner.”

“Then what’s got you so…” Declan closed his eyes. “Oh, hell. _Hell._ Jesus Mary, fucking _hell,_ Ronan.”

“You’ve been gone more than a year.” The agitation was still present under Ronan’s skin, a crackling hum of energy, but it was dissipating outward now. Rage hurled in scattered fistfuls at the world, rather than a pointed blade driven toward Declan’s chest. “Things change.”

“How many?”

Ronan glared at him. The bruises were already starting to blossom on his face. Declan knew he couldn’t look much better. When Ronan released him and got to his feet, it was a surrender as much as a mercy.

Declan wasn’t going to get answers like this. He tried to remember what talking to Ronan had been like when they’d still liked each other, before their lives had fallen to pieces. Even then, Declan had always been protecting him. Even then, Ronan didn’t know or care.

“Grab me the first aid kit,” Declan said, sitting up. It was an olive branch. “I think both of us need to come clean about some things.”

Ronan laughed without a trace of humor. But he did retrieve the kit from the counter and toss it in Declan’s direction. Declan caught it with ease.

“Great,” he replied, cold as ice and angry as an inferno. “You get to start. Who have you been killing for the past year?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> declan and ronan both talk about their feelings and they both hate it so much

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> accidentally posted chapter 1 again my bad. fixed it hopefully

The truth of the matter was this: Niall Lynch had been a lot of things, but “good father” didn’t make the list.

He was also much better at starting projects than finishing them. Not a fatal flaw when the projects were books of poetry, snatches of music, half-sketched drawings, painted backgrounds with no detailed foreground to draw the eye. But this flaw didn’t pair well with vampire hunting, in Declan’s opinion. In Declan’s opinion, if you were going to kill someone, you needed to know who would care that they were gone, and then you needed to make a plan for how to deal with those people.

Niall Lynch’s death had left a thousand vengeful loose ends in its wake.

There were plenty of vampires who wanted the Lynch brothers to pay for the sins of their father. The occasional human strayed into the mix, too, stupidly in love with the dead. Humans tended to be less dangerous, but underestimating them was a bad move. If there was one thing the human race was known for, it was killing itself.

So Declan had positioned himself as a shield through weaponry. He left Henrietta and went in search of those that wanted them dead. He killed before he could get killed. He was methodical, precise, empty. Declan was a better hunter than Niall Lynch had ever been because he understood something Niall hadn’t. You couldn’t be an individual and a hunter simultaneously. Niall’s sense of identity was just a collection of Achilles heels. To succeed as a hunter, you had to cut the humanity out of yourself, pare your body down to a singleminded purpose.

Declan did not enjoy what he did. (Niall had.) But it was a necessity. If he didn’t hunt, the enemies would start sniffing around the younger Lynch brothers. Find out where Matthew’s open, unprotected campus was. Seek the Barns and start hammering away at the various protections on the property. Try to find and kill the middle Lynch brother when he was out courting trouble, because he always courted trouble at night, and he didn’t care whether he lived or died.

There was just one cold fear that prickled under Declan’s skin, made him sit up in a cold sweat in shitty motel rooms. That a revenge-seeker would realize Ronan and Matthew made easier targets than the actively hunting brother. Turn their plans away from Declan and toward the surviving members of his family.

So he made himself interesting. And dangerous. And difficult to predict. Half the battle here was making the bloodsuckers afraid to look over their shoulders. If they thought Declan might appear in their mirrors like a childhood party game gone wrong, they’d be too preoccupied to remember other Lynches existed.

Declan told Ronan the names. It was a long list.

Ronan wouldn’t know who half these bloodsuckers were, much less their connections to Niall Lynch and his idiocy. He didn’t really care about the names. Declan knew his brother wasn’t in the habit of believing him, anyway, which was fair; Declan wasn’t in the habit of telling the truth. These names were true, but they weren’t an answer to the question Ronan was really asking. Ronan wanted to know _why._ And, Declan surmised from the intensity of his gaze, he was listening to make sure certain names _weren’t_ on the list.

Declan patched himself up as he spoke. His voice remained placid as he swabbed antiseptic over both old and new wounds, redid his stitches with steady hands. He might have been an automated phone tree for all the inflection he offered. Almost all of his wounds had been redressed by the time he finished; he just needed to set his broken nose.

He got to his feet and made his way into the bathroom nearest the kitchen, leaving the door halfway ajar as he examined himself in the mirror. Damn. The swelling would abate easily enough, but until the break healed, Declan would need to resign himself to looking like he’d been in a bar fight. It wasn’t the end of the world. He could use the disaster-loser angle to his advantage. But it did make his usual avenues of information gathering -- charm, seduction, and affability -- more difficult to access.

Also, he didn’t like looking so much like Ronan.

By the time he’d placed his fingertips on either side of his nose and maneuvered it back where it was supposed to be, an endeavor that involved a lot of crunching and gritted teeth, Ronan was leaning against the door of the bathroom.

“What the fuck happened to your chest?”

“I made a mistake. I paid for it. They thought they had me helpless. Almost did. But they were wrong.” Declan wasn’t going to offer details. He was making an effort to be truthful, and he felt like if he tried to explain the terror of the experience, lies would start rolling off his tongue without his volition. Plus, it wasn’t Ronan’s business, and it was also intensely embarrassing that he’d let anyone surprise him.

Showing Ronan had been impulse, too, a move he’d prefer to take back. He hadn’t wanted to explain, really. Just to illustrate that not everyone could sit pretty in a fucking farmhouse getting bitten by benevolent bloodsuckers. There were better ways to make the point; he could see that now. Ronan’s presence always snapped his self control in half.

“How long did you drive to get here?”

“Eighteen hours. Slept in a rest stop partway through, during daylight.”

“Why come here?”

“Because like an idiot, I assumed you were smart enough _not_ to open the premises to every pretty creature with an extra set of fangs. What’s the situation with Parrish?”

“He’s dating Gansey,” Ronan said. The way he said it made Declan positive it was a partial truth, a lie of omission. “He needed a donor, so I volunteered. Because I’m a great fucking person who gives a shit about humanity and _doing the right thing.”_ This last part accompanied a sneer that wouldn’t be out-of-place on Republican politicians acknowledging the existence of poor people.

“There are better ways to kill yourself.”

“I like this one.”

Declan curled his fingers around the edge of the sink and prayed for patience. The porcelain was stained with flecks of blood from his chin, his nostrils, his hands. The face meeting his gaze in the mirror didn’t look very patient.

“Who else are you messing around with?” he asked instead.

“None of your fucking business.”

“I’m asking so I don’t _kill them,_ you little pissant.” Declan ran the tap, splashed water over his skin to wash the blood down the drain. His face didn’t look horrible, once the scarlet had been removed from the equation. But he also hadn’t had time to bruise fully yet.

“Nah. You’re asking so you can leave here, go on a homebaked Henrietta murder spree, and fuck back off into who cares where before I can come after you.” The way Ronan was standing made it clear that Declan wouldn’t be leaving the bathroom until he’d satisfied Ronan that this wasn’t the case. Declan had no idea how to accomplish this when Ronan distrusted every word out of his mouth.

They were interrupted by a knock at the door. “Don’t answer it,” Declan said immediately.

Ronan snorted.

“I’m serious. I don’t know how bad you fucked over the property protection, but it’s three in the goddamn morning, no one at the door is selling magazine subscriptions.”

“Pretty fucking polite if they’re planning to kill me,” Ronan observed, turning away and starting for the front door. “I feel like if all murderers knocked before they broke into the house, there’d be more easily settled differences in this special, fucked-up world.”

“_Ronan,_” Declan hissed.

But since Ronan was intent on ignoring him as fucking always, Declan followed him, seamlessly drawing the unconfiscated gun from inside his boot. Better safe than sorry.

Nothing dramatic or tragic happened when Ronan opened the door. Declan couldn’t see past his brother’s silhouette to whoever was standing on the porch. What he could see was the sudden slumping of Ronan’s shoulders, the shape of his relieved exhale. At least eighty percent of the tension in his body was tied to this individual.

There was a low murmur of voices, too soft for Declan to hear. Then, much louder, an unfamiliar voice said, “I’m coming in,” and Ronan said, “Jesus fucking hell, the fuck, you are not,” and the voice said, _“It’s my life too, Ronan,”_ and Ronan growled something unintelligible and stepped back.

The girl on the porch was a vampire. But she was one of the ones with enough normal-looking features and human-seeming energy to pass as a real person. Nothing like Parrish and his otherworldly sense of predator. Her hair was tamed by a truly impressive array of clips, and she was wearing something Declan thought might have been salvaged from a Dumpster. The outfit certainly had enough tears and garish layers.

Declan recognized her.

He thumbed back the safety on the gun and raised it. There was no disguising the _click._

He just caught the girl’s widened eyes before Ronan shouted, _“No!”_ and threw himself in front of her.

_God,_ the theatrics.

Declan didn’t lower the gun, but he did adjust his grip to remove his finger from the trigger. He didn’t want to accidentally shoot Ronan. (If Declan ever shot Ronan, God knew it would be on purpose and wholly justified.)

“Explain,” he said.

“Blue,” Ronan said, “go home. Now.”

“No.” The girl, who Declan knew was Blue Sargent, appeared to possess a streak of either stubbornness or stupidity that rivaled Ronan’s. Declan noted this in the way he noted most things about vampires prior to killing them.

_“Sargent,”_ Ronan said, strained.

So he knew too, then.

“I have this ideal world in my head,” Blue said. Declan couldn’t see her past Ronan’s bulk, but had no doubt her facial expression was as acidic as her voice. “This little fantasy. It involves your brother kicking his gun over to you, and the three of us sitting at the kitchen table having a conversation, and no one dying. I’m fantasizing about this for your sake, Ronan, not mine. Because if I have to go home and tell my mom that I was threatened with a gun, we both know how that’s gonna end, whether he’s your brother or not.”

Like with Parrish earlier, Declan experienced a grudging feeling of respect. Like with Parrish earlier, this annoyed him deeply.

“Declan.” Declan couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard Ronan address him by name in any serious capacity. His name, from Ronan’s mouth, was always edged with the same mockery or cruelty that Ronan’s various curses were. So he knew that whatever followed mattered more than anything Ronan had spit at him since their father died.

“If you kill her,” Ronan said, “I die.”

Declan took a deep breath. It was clear, then, that the problem wouldn’t be solved by a bullet or a stake or any of the easy ways. In fairness, once he got over the adrenaline shock of seeing a Sargent on the doorstep, he recognized that there weren’t “easy ways” no matter what. That kind of thinking was what had gotten Niall Lynch killed. If Declan put Blue down, the immediate problem of her presence in Ronan’s life would be solved. But her family would want vengeance. The nest that included the Sargents was larger than just them, encompassing vampires with varying levels of power and morality. Not all of them would want every Lynch dead. Some would settle for just Declan’s blood.

But some would slaughter Ronan and hang his body from the rafters, paint Matthew’s insides across the fresh green of his high school campus. 

Declan could not kill Blue Sargent.

He put the safety back on the gun, lowered it to the ground, sent it skidding across the tile floor. Ronan picked it up like he was handling a venomous snake. It made Declan angry, and it made him tired. Ronan could only afford to be disgusted by vampire-killing weaponry because Declan had taken on all the violence that should’ve been shared between the three brothers.

Ronan sat down at the table, turned to place the gun very carefully on the windowsill behind him, next to a potted plant and a glass-beaded fairy bottle their mother had threaded forever ago. Blue sat in the chair beside him. They faced Declan like an incomplete panel of judges before the gates of heaven, an angel and a demon ready to read his sins. Only he couldn’t decide who was the angel and who was the demon.

Blue’s thin-pressed mouth and set jaw betrayed no hint of fear. Ronan, though -- the average person wouldn’t be able to see past Ronan’s rage and hatred to anything underneath, and Declan wouldn’t have if Ronan hadn’t betrayed himself with his protectiveness. Now that he was looking for it, though, Declan could see the terror thrumming through Ronan’s whole body, in the way only someone who’d grown up protecting him from that exact fear could.

It made Declan cold to think that it was him who’d put that fear there, and not the vampire sitting beside Ronan. The room dropped a few degrees. When he exhaled, he was surprised not to see his breath.

“You can’t touch Blue’s family,” Ronan said without preamble. “Our family has a truce with them. They’re keeping up their end. We keep up ours.”

“Dad _had_ a truce with them,” Declan corrected. “I don’t remember being part of those negotiations.”

Blue bared her teeth. It was a concern, but not as much of a concern as the way Ronan flinched.

Declan pinched the bridge of his nose, then remembered how fucking broken it was when pain flared through his entire face. He exhaled again, trying to get rid of all the air in his lungs so he could start fresh. Clean.

“Look,” he tried, cautious, “I’m not killing anyone. I just need to know what’s going on here.”

Blue’s gaze could have scorched the Virginia foothills with hellfire and smoke. “All right,” she said. She might have been trying for pleasantness, but the murder bled through regardless. “Against all my better judgment, I let myself become friends with a Lynch brother because I liked Gansey enough to trust _his_ judgment. Liking Gansey was enough of a surprise, so you can only _imagine_ how it felt to like Ronan, too. And just as I’m getting used to the idea that maybe humans don’t need to be their worst selves, my boyfriend shows up at Monmouth to warn me that there’s a Lynch brother in town who’s everything we were afraid Ronan was gonna be. I come over to make sure my family’s not going to be _murdered_ for the crime of _existing,_ and I get a gun pointed in my face, which is _not_ making you seem like someone to negotiate with.”

Declan had followed nearly all of this, save one detail. “Boyfriend?”

Blue looked ready to spit acid. “Yeah, boyfriend, because I’m a silly and vapid and pretty little thing who likes to think about kissing boys. My bad for being a girl on top of a damned creature of the night. I’m _so_ sorry. Does that make you uncomfortable, sweetie? Are you upset that I have meaningful relationships, or that I fit into whatever misogynistic portrait of helpless human girls you have in your head? Either way, I hope you _choke.”_

Ronan covered his mouth with his hand. It did nothing to disguise the shaking of his shoulders as he laughed.

Declan pressed his fingers against his eyes to stave off the building headache. “I meant who _is_ your boyfriend.”

“Adam. You know, the other person you’ve wanted dead tonight for absolutely no reason? Try to keep up.”

Declan’s expression was accusatory, but aimed at Ronan rather than Blue. “You said he was dating Gansey.”

Ronan spoke between his fingers since he was still muffling his laughter. “He is.”

“I am _not_ explaining the concept of ethical non-monogamy to you,” Blue snapped. “I’m already at the end of my rope.”

Declan was familiar with the concept of ethical non-monogamy. He was, however, surprised that _Ronan_ was familiar with it. Even more surprised that Ronan was _comfortable_ with it, considering how hideously judgmental he liked to be about any relationship Declan ever had, ever. A suspicion was growing in the back of his mind about his younger brother. About the vampires, and his closeness to them, and the quickness with which he’d defended both Parrish and Sargent.

“So you two,” he said slowly. He wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence. The Ronan sitting in front of him was a different Ronan than the one he’d left behind more than a year ago. Declan had no idea where the edges of the two images matched up. It set him adrift in ways he didn’t like. Logically, he knew that people changed as time went on, and that expecting humans to remain the same as the photo stills in his head was absurd. But he wasn’t sure how he felt about coming home to find that things weren’t as he’d left them.

Ronan lowered his hand from his mouth. Not because he’d stopped smiling; if anything, the mirth on his face had just grown. Unbelievably, Blue’s mouth was also twitching like she was suppressing a grin.

“Don’t be disgusting,” Ronan said. “I’m gay.”

He said this like a challenge, but Declan couldn’t find anything deeper than amusement in his face. Ronan had clearly washed his hands of Declan’s reaction to this news. He wasn’t looking for validation or a Hallmark card. It was just another thing he’d decided made a fun weapon, like the concept of Parrish’s teeth in his skin.

Declan, who’d slept with his fair share of men, was unperturbed by the revelation. A little startled, maybe, but when he thought about it, the only thing that _really_ startled him was Ronan being self-aware enough to actually use the word ‘gay.’

“So you and Parrish,” Declan tried again.

“Don’t be disgusting,” Ronan said. He was trying so hard to keep a straight face that he looked like he had an ulcer. “He’s a vampire.”

Blue let out a shout of laughter that had her clapping a hand over her own mouth. She mediated her expression into a glare at Ronan, which was undermined by how fucking funny she’d clearly found the comment.

Declan was aging ten years for every passing second.

“You and Gansey?” he tried.

“Oh, yeah,” Ronan said. “That one’s on the money.”

All right. At least something about the situation was making sense now. The only reason Declan had felt comfortable leaving Ronan alone was because he knew Gansey could take care of him. Unlike Declan, Gansey had an unending fountain of patience and willingness to put up with Ronan’s highs and lows. 

Declan, on the other hand, couldn’t deal with the expression of irrational emotion. He very rarely expressed any of his own irrational emotions, and it irritated him that Ronan lacked the same self-control. This did not make Declan the best at things like “emotional support” and “compassionate understanding” and “not making your kid brother suicidal,” especially when the kid brother had both a diagnosis of manic depression and an aversion to taking his fucking medication.

Declan was aware of this. His separation from the family had, in its own way, been for both his and Ronan’s sake. He couldn’t tell whether it had been a good call or the worst call he’d ever made. Ronan had become someone that Declan was starting to think he could actually respect, but he had also entangled himself with a bunch of vampires. The jury was out.

Gansey was good for Ronan. Of all the people Ronan could have ended up romantic with, Declan was glad it was someone who could handle him without breaking him. He’d never say this out loud, firstly because Ronan didn’t care and lastly because Ronan would twist it into a negative sentiment. Expressing genuine concern or appreciation was impossible; Ronan already had his incontrovertible mental image of what he thought Declan felt, and he’d interpret Declan’s behavior in whatever way best suited that image.

Declan continued speaking slowly, like he was putting together a thesis. “So Gansey has his whole vampire interest,” he said, because Gansey did. Gansey made no secret of his fascination with the creatures or his firm belief that they were people. Declan just hadn’t anticipated him taking that belief to the extreme of _dating_ them. “You’re dating Gansey, Gansey’s dating Parrish, Parrish is dating Sargent, so all of you are friends.”

_Friends_ stuck in his mouth a little. It dropped from his mouth with more weight than the other words, landing flat and empty on the table between them.

“I’m also dating Gansey,” Blue said. “We’re a triad, him and Adam and me. Not that it’s any of your business, I’m just clarifying.”

Declan’s instinctive concern was not, as he would have expected, for Ronan’s immediate proximity to multiple vampires. He’d already digested that. His concern was for his younger brother’s heart. Ronan tended to love with everything in him, and he was fanatically jealous of anyone else muscling in on his territory, and Declan couldn’t imagine him being comfortable belonging to Gansey when Gansey also belonged to other people.

Granted, Declan had been considering murdering two out of the four players in this ridiculous soap opera about ten minutes ago, so the sudden shift into caring about their dynamic was a lot to deal with.

Even if he’d wanted to, he had no idea how to express genuine worry. He leaned into asshole instead. “All the shit you’ve given me about casual sex, and you’re sleeping with a guy who apparently gives it up to anything with fangs?”

Blue spread her hands on the table and leaned forward in the beginnings of a hunting crouch. _“Excuse me?”_

Ronan glanced at her. His expression said that he was looking forward to Blue pulling out Declan’s entrails with ecstatic delight. But then he reached to very gently touch her shoulder, because his expression also said that he recognized that Blue throwing Declan into the roof beams would have consequences.

Blue turned to him with a snarl. “Oh, _don’t_ tell me how to fight my battles. I’m tired of being _nice.”_

If this was her _nice,_ Declan didn’t want to know what she was like mean.

“I didn’t say a word,” Ronan said. He was, Declan thought, trying his best to look sincere despite remaining delighted. “I’m politely asking you not to kill my brother.”

“I’m not going to kill him. I’m going to non-lethally wring his neck until he apologizes.”

“Yes, you’re very capable of this,” Ronan said placatingly. She just glared harder. “He’s not worth it.”

“Don’t you dare condescend to me, Ronan Lynch.”

“I’m not.” Declan had never heard Ronan use this particular placating tone, but he’d definitely heard it from Gansey. Maybe Ronan had picked up a few useful skills, or maybe Ronan was just imitating Gansey to be irritating. The dynamic here was a mystery to him. “I am infinitely _fucking_ aware of how lethal you are. I’m trying to be a responsible person. Keeping you from giving the kitchen wall the Lynch-law-of-force acquaintance is actually killing me.”

Declan placed his head in his hands. “She’s attacked you?”

“I wouldn’t say attacked,” Ronan said. “Lovingly hurled me into hard surfaces with bone-shattering force.”

_“I_ would say attacked,” Blue said. Impossibly, she was relaxing back into her chair, though the ghost of the anger remained on her face. “You,” she added, returning her attention to Declan, “are an _asshat.”_

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Declan said. He leaned the chair back on two legs. He did not smirk, or at least didn’t _think_ he did, but was aware it was an asshole’s posture anyway. There wasn’t any reason for this particular move beyond that Niall Lynch had bestowed upon his two eldest sons the occasional desire to make people want to hit them. Declan tended to repress his, which meant it showed up in moments like this instead of his core personality.

Blue’s lips flattened. “You two,” she said, “are _exactly alike.”_

“Jesus, Sargent,” Ronan replied, placing a hand over his heart like he’d been wounded. “You don’t gotta go in for the kill like that. I am in the line of fire.”

“Yes, I was insulting both of you. I’m glad you got it.” She patted his free hand. He made a show of slumping dramatically in his seat like he’d been shot.

Declan felt the conversation getting away from him, and he wasn’t gleaning anything useful through observation beyond what he'd already established. The casual ease with which Ronan and Blue touched each other spoke of a familiar, well-bonded friendship. Something that stood outside Ronan tolerating her presence for Gansey’s sake.

“You never miss an opportunity to call me a hypocrite,” Declan pointed out. “I think it’s fair to be pleased about the shoe being on the other foot for once.”

“I’m not a hypocrite,” Ronan said.

Declan scoffed, and Ronan placed his leather wristbands between his teeth, chewing on them like an agitated pit bull going at a tattered toy to expend energy. There was silence for maybe fifteen seconds, a pregnant pause while Blue returned her gaze to Declan and Ronan put more teeth marks in bracelets that were basically made of teeth marks.

Finally, Ronan lowered his arm, placing both hands on the table. “I’m not a hypocrite,” he said, “because it isn’t casual. They’re family. I’m fucking telling you, Declan, that I can’t fucking survive losing them, which means Gansey _and_ Adam _and_ Blue. All three of them. I swear to God, I don’t know how I can express this any more fucking clearly. Look at me, making a huge goddamn effort to be sincere. If you want to kill them, then kill me first, because I’ll die either way and I’d prefer not to spend any time in a world where any of them aren’t alive.”

He finished this speech with a ragged little gasp. A furrow appeared between Blue’s brows. She laid her arm on the table next to Ronan’s, nudging it with her own.

Of course, Ronan had to spoil it with, “Don’t you fucking dare go telling people I said something nice, Sargent. I’m hostage negotiating.”

“Oh, Adam and Gansey are hearing about this immediately,” she said with a private little smile. “But I’ll make sure to mention how your confession was coerced. It’ll never hold up in court.”

“Cool. I don’t want any fucking expectations that now I’m gonna start dropping casual ‘I love you’s into shit.”

Declan let the chair rest on all fours again. The thing was, he _believed_ Ronan. And, though every bone in his body remained wary, he thought he believed Blue, too. Not by things she’d said; aside from insulting him and arguing with Ronan, she hadn’t really said much. But by the way she interacted with Ronan. If she was part of a greater conspiracy to kill the Lynch family, there were easier ways to do it than playacting an entire friendship.

Granted, there was a chance she was just suckering Declan into believing that, using the human-seeming parts of her to spin a web. That was where the wariness came in.

“Okay,” Declan said. It came out in his business negotiator voice, a pleasant but purposeful tone that said there were deals to be made here. “I won’t kill you” -- this he addressed to Blue, since he doubted she would put up with being spoken about in the third person -- “and I won’t kill Parrish. I assume I also can’t kill anyone in or adjacent to the Sargent family. I would appreciate it if, in exchange, you could help me understand a little better.”

“Understand what?” Blue asked.

“How you…” Declan looked for a word, couldn’t find anything appropriate, and finished with a wince. “Operate.”

“How we _operate,”_ Blue repeated, scathing. “Well, as long as that’s _all._ As if that’s not the most spy-for-me logistics-seeking murder-planning _bull_ I’ve ever heard in my life. Will you go back on the murder promise if I say no?”

“No. It’s not -- I’m not -- look, I’m trying, okay?” Declan let out a frustrated breath. “I want to get my head around it.”

Blue was quiet for a moment, though Ronan did offer up a derisive snort.

“Okay,” she said, and for a moment she didn’t sound angry at all, but there was such a wavering note of vulnerability to her tone that the anger snapped back into place immediately. “Here’s the thing. While we’re all being sincere, I mean. I don’t like you. I think you’re an unfeeling piece of garbage and that the world’s probably better without you in it. I think you’re a bad person and don’t care to be any better. I don’t like you.

“I don’t like that you pointed a gun at me without knowing anything about me except that I drink blood. I don’t like that you threatened Adam. I don’t like that you wouldn’t even give me a chance to speak if Ronan wasn’t forcing your hand, and I don’t like that I’m sitting here needing to represent the entirety of my _species_ to try to change your mind about us _existing._ I don’t like that I am sitting here telling myself to try to be tolerant and _nice,_ and I don’t like that I am telling myself that because I’m afraid if I’m not tolerant and nice, you’re going to hurt people I care about. It makes me want you _dead._

“You can go on all you want about how _hard_ it is to be a vampire hunter with all these evil creatures that want to kill you, but your family chose to start hunting us. It wasn’t you specifically. I know it wasn’t you. I know it goes back generations. But we didn’t choose to be what we are, at least not most of us. I was born this way. So was Adam. Even if we hadn’t been, we’d still have a right to exist. I don’t think you believe that we feel anything, but I promise you we do. _I_ do. I’m scared _every day_ that something’s going to happen to my family because of people like _you,_ and you don’t care. You don’t. We’re just targets to you. So I don’t really want to hold your hand and tell you it’s okay not to kill us because we’re the _good_ ones. What I want is for you to agree to leave my family alone, and then I want you to go away.”

She punctuated the speech by turning her face away, scrubbing her sleeve over her eyes. Ronan’s mouth twisted. With the arms of their chairs between their bodies, he couldn’t really pull her against him, but he draped himself against her shoulder and wrapped his arms loosely around her.

Declan became aware that his mouth was open. With some difficulty, he closed it. It took a moment to place the unpleasant feeling in his gut as profound shame. Sickening shame. The worst part was that there wasn’t any anger to temper it. Though Blue’s tone and words had sounded incensed, she’d spoken to him with enough candid openness to make him feel like an asshole. Nothing she’d said was unfair.

He hated it. He hated having emotions, which he regarded as sensations similar to the flu, and even more than that he hated being obligated to voice them. He could leave now. Take what she’d said to heart, stop intruding on Ronan’s life, roll the dice and recover in a shitty motel room anyway. Hope not to die in the process. But if he did that, he’d be widening the distance between him and Ronan. Ronan would remember him only as the estranged brother who’d tried to hurt his friends. Any shadow of a hope at mending their relationship would shatter.

“I haven’t…” Declan started, and then thought better of it. _Killed anyone innocent_ was what he’d meant to say, but he wasn’t sure he and Blue had the same definition of innocent. “Haven’t started any new fires. All I’m trying to do is put out Dad’s. If you guys are keeping the peace even though he’s dead, then cool. That’s one less fire I have to put out. All I needed to make sure was that you weren’t bullshitting me.”

“Murder is a shitty way to put out fires,” Blue said. “You douse the flames in blood, nothing’s going to grow back right.”

“Everyone I’ve killed has either tried or been planning to try to move against me. Or my family in general. I’m not indiscriminate. I don’t have the time to be.” Declan clenched his jaw. “I’m not my father.”

Blue didn’t disentangle herself from the loose grasp of Ronan’s arms, but she did turn back to Declan. “My family wouldn’t do whatever happened there,” she said, nodding at Declan’s still-exposed chest, the bloody bandages. “We don’t kill humans. Or hurt them, as a general rule. All the donor relationships we have are consensual.”

“Okay.” Declan nodded. “I’m just going to point out -- very mildly and inoffensively -- that you have not known the people in your family for their entire lives.”

“And I’m going to point out that people can change, and aren’t the worst thing they’ve ever done, and that forgiveness and growth are supposed to be basic tenets of Catholicism, which isn’t my faith but _is_ supposed to be yours.”

Declan acknowledged this volley back with the barest tightening of his mouth. “Okay. They do help vampires who are slightly less than apologetic, though.”

“If my family members help people in need and get them blood and encourage them not to kill humans, then we’re just helping do your job. Better than you do it, too, since no one _dies_ our way.”

Declan didn’t feel this was a point that he could argue. Not necessarily because Blue was right -- he wasn’t sure about that at all -- but because he didn’t have enough verified information. What he knew was that the 300 Fox Way home base housed more vampires living together than in nearly any other place in Virginia. It wasn’t just the permanent residents that made up the clan, but the number of passing bloodsuckers who’d take up temporary residence in the dwelling. No vampire entered Henrietta without the approval of the women of 300 Fox Way, and no humans had been killed by a vampire attack in town for at least as long as Declan had been alive.

Declan had always assumed the lack of in-town bloodshed was so they could keep their cover and not need to leave. Having a nest with a known location was playing with fire as far as both hunters and other vampires were concerned. By making themselves some of the most powerful but least outwardly-vicious creatures in the supernatural world, the Fox Way women had carved out a stable corner of the world for themselves. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing they’d be willing to give up.

Maybe, though, _possibly,_ there was also a shred of almost-human decency in the group.

“So Parrish,” Declan said. “He’s one of yours?”

“Adam is his own.” That was Ronan, speaking for the first time in long minutes, surprising Declan with his ferocity. “He’s never killed anyone, and he’s not gonna. He’s better than you or I are ever gonna be. Probably better than Blue, too. Sorry, Sargent. No offense.”

“None taken,” Blue said, more cheerful in this than Declan had heard her yet. “Adam’s pretty great.”

Ronan’s face was planted against the top of Blue’s head, since apparently that made it easier for him to voice things that weren’t insults. Declan was surprised her spiky hair wasn’t gouging out his eyes. When Ronan’s words had a minute to settle, Declan realized he wasn’t shocked by the obvious tenderness, not really. He’d known since the second he saw them together, probably. Ronan and Adam might not be dating, but that didn’t mean Ronan wasn’t in love with him.

God.

Declan had been working on his own for a long time. He couldn’t remember the last connection he’d made that had meaning. Usually, he was fine with that. He preferred not to open up to people, and he preferred to avoid the messiness of being opened up to. But being solitary was exhausting. He always needed to be hypervigilant to keep from getting killed. There was no one he could bitch to with any degree of honesty, no one to lean on. In the end, humans were social creatures. They wore their relationships like armor. Ronan had found himself a family, but Declan had been left in the cold.

No, that wasn’t fair. Declan had been raised in the cold, always an outsider to the easy love and companionship the rest of his family shared. But when the opportunity came to walk in the door, wipe off his boots, warm up by the fire, he’d shut himself out in the winter instead. That had been his doing. He couldn’t blame it on Ronan or the dead.

“You said she’s part of your family now,” he said to Ronan. Then, to Blue, “Is he part of yours?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your relatives. Do they know about him? Would they protect him?”

Blue tilted her chin up. She didn’t need to give the question much consideration. “Yeah. Calla loves him. My mom and Persephone tolerate him. My cousin Orla wants to eat him, but that’s basically how she says hi. My aunt Jimi thinks he’s trouble but wants to knit him a blanket. I keep telling her not to bother.”

Declan drummed his fingertips on the table, a back-and-forth thrumming of four digits, an anxious tic he was usually too composed to show. “Would they help me?”

Blue’s eyes blazed, any gentle warmth in her disappearing. “Help you _kill people?”_

“Help me _protect_ my fucking _family.”_ Declan managed, once again, to forget about his broken nose until he pinched the bridge of it. “It doesn’t have to be my way. It can be yours.”

Blue gave him a slow, considering look. Then she poked Ronan’s chest. “Do you think he’s for real?”

“I never think he’s for real,” Ronan answered. It lacked the typical bite, though. “I do think your mom can take him if he tries any shit.”

“Oh, I know that.” She hummed. “What is it you want, exactly? Allyship? A new truce? My family won’t help you with hunting, I can tell you that right now.”

“I just want…” Declan faltered. He wasn’t in the business of wanting things, at least not on more than a shallow level. There were plenty of things he wanted on the surface, shiny cars and fancy watches and a pretty girl or boy in his bed, but none of those came close to touching the chasm in his chest. Saying this, this real thing, this true thing, felt like too big a confession. He did it anyway. It came out a snarl. “I want all this to be _over.”_

The hunting, the killing, the blood, the lying awake at night because if he closed his eyes he’d see his father’s dead body and his brothers twisted and mangled and misshapen. A thousand nightmares, a million fears. He wanted to be done. He’d wanted to be done since the start.

The little furrow reappeared between Blue’s brows. Something in her gaze spoke of pity, or contempt -- Declan had found they tended to be the same thing. It relit the flame of anger in him. He pulled his pride back on like a well-tailored jacket and met her eyes steadily.

“Okay,” she said, assessing him and either finding or not finding whatever she was looking for. “I'm not making any promises. But okay. I’ll take you to meet my mother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL. ANOTHER FIC THAT GOT AWAY FROM ME.  
anyway, i hope you all enjoyed this monster of a word count and the continuing self-indulgent content, thanks for reading!


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